There are many types of listening and speaking activities in the book. Most of the units include word pairs that contrast two sounds. Word pairs are pairs of words, such as night and light, that are the same except for one sound. If your first language does not have one or both of the different sounds in the word pair, practicing the word pairs can help you learn to hear - and produce - the two different sounds.
The present volume is a corpus-based study of the occurrence, variation, and change in the use of English adjective pairs in -ic and -ical over several centuries. The study involves the analysis of large, multi-million-word corpora representing the English language at various stages. It examines the nature of competition between the two affixes: what kind of rivalry existed, what kinds of words entered into competition, and in what ways the rivalry was resolved. The book presents close studies of six notably differentiated -ic/-ical adjective pairs, namely classic/classical, comic/comical, economic/economical, electric/electrical, historic/historical, and magic/magical, as well as commentaries on some 40 other -ic/-ical pairs, which manifest different types of shifts in use through history.
Antonymy is the technical name used to describe 'opposites', pairs of words such as rich / poor, love / hate and male / female. Antonyms are a ubiquitous part of everyday language, and this book provides a detailed, comprehensive account of the phenomenon. As well as re-appraising traditional semantic theory and re-evaluating existing categories of antonymy, the book raises wider issues, including questions such as: Where do new atonyms come from? Which pairs can be regarded as 'good opposites'? Why do atonyms tend to favour a particular sequence in text?
Among popular non-fiction titles for adults adapted for younger audiences, this picture book based on Truss' 2004 best-seller about punctuation may be a surprise, considering most kids' indifference to the topic. Yet it proves very effective, thanks to entertaining repackaging that narrows the original's broad purview to the comma, and focuses on cartoonist Timmons' interpretations of humorous comma-related goofs akin to the one referenced by the title (the punchline of an old joke about a panda, here set in a library rather than a bar).
While dissolving into giggles over the change in meaning between "Eat here, and get gas," or "Eat here and get gas" (likely to be the most popular of the 14 sentence pairs given), children will find themselves gaining an instinctive understanding of the "traffic signals of language," even without the concluding spread explaining the whys and wherefores.
This text contains over 1500 lexical items, divided into topic areas, with exercises to provide the practice students need to build their vocabulary in an interesting way. The material can be used in pairs or groups, as well as by students working individually, at elementary to advanced level.
